A visit to a hospital by a patient often involves the placement of the patient in a bed or gurney, and the treatment of the patient while in the bed or gurney. As used in this application, the term “bed” will be used to collectively designate both beds and gurneys. Hospital beds and gurneys are similar items, with a hospital bed typically being a larger structure that is usually stationarily positioned within a room, even though the bed may have wheels to enable the bed to be moved within the hospital.
In contrast, a gurney is a more temporary type of bed that is intended to hold a patient temporarily, with the expectation that the patient will later be transported in the gurney to a hospital room where the patient will be placed in a hospital bed. Being smaller, lighter and less complex than a bed, a gurney is better suited for transportation between various areas in a hospital than a bed.
While in a hospital, the patient is often treated while in his bed. Such treatments usually involve the examination of the patient, drawing blood from the patient, and the like. Additionally, treatment procedures are performed on patients such as performing an EKG, suturing a patient, performing procedures on the patient (e.g. colonoscopy) and taking blood pressure.
Many of these treatments require the patient to partially or fully disrobe. For example, in order to perform an EKG on a patient, the patient's shirt must be removed (including a bra if performed on a woman). Various EKG leads are attached at various positions on to the patient's chest, and are hooked up to a machine. Such disrobing is preferably done in a private setting so that others can not view the patient's exposed body parts.
Normally, maintaining privacy is not a major issue for a patient who is in a patient room in the hospital, since most patient rooms are enclosed, and have doors that can be closed to keep prying eyes from viewing what is occurring inside the room. However, the privacy afforded by a hospital room is missing in certain circumstances. For example privacy is often compromised in emergency rooms within hospitals. Often, patients in hospital emergency rooms do not have any “privacy” guard around them, to prevent others from viewing the patient during the time that the patient is laying in his bed, or more importantly, when a procedure is occurring.
As used in this application, the term “privacy guard” will be used generically to denote a barrier that is placeable around a patient to ensure both privacy, and some degree of infection control. One type of privacy guard is the walls and doors that one finds in a hospital room. Other privacy guards include room divider curtains.
Many emergency and outpatient areas within hospitals do contain one or more treatment rooms that provide walls and doors as privacy barriers. However, many emergency rooms also have ward-like areas where a plurality of beds may be contained within a single room. Many of these treatment areas are designed for multiple patients, and include movable privacy guards. Movable privacy guards in a ward-like setting typically comprise curtains that are hung from a track attached to the ceiling. The track includes a channel for receiving curtain couplers, that couple the curtain to the track. These couplers often include slugs or track runners, that can move along a track channel, so that the curtain can be moved between an open position and a closed position.
Most such tracks are generally U-shaped, and include a first leg and a second leg that extend generally parallel to the first and second sides of the bed. A third leg connects the first and second legs, and extends generally parallel to the end surface (foot) of the bed. The area enclosed by the tracks should be about three times the area presented by the bed surface, to provide an area between the interior surface of the curtain and the side of the bed in which treating personnel may stand while performing treatments on the patient.
In use, the curtain is moved from an open position, where it is gathered usually at one end of the track, to a closed position where the curtain extends all the way around the U-shaped track to enclose the bed. The drawing of the fabric curtain around a patient being treated rarely provides a good sound barrier, to protect “noise privacy”. However, the use of a fabric curtain does do a good job of providing visual privacy for the patient.
In addition to the privacy provided, the curtain also provides a measure of infection control. During treatment of a patient, it is not unusual for body fluids to become volatilized and sprays created. For example, a patient's sneeze can release an airborne spray containing a plurality of germs into the atmosphere. Additionally, a patient that is bleeding, sweating or moving, can discharge airborne pathogens. Because of the proximity of patients in such a ward-like setting, and the number of people in the ward, these airborne pathogens have a significant possibility of infecting nearby patients, visitors and hospital personnel.
It has been long appreciated that hospitals have infection vector laden environments. These infection vectors include bacterial and viral vectors. Certain infection vectors such as MRSA (methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus) are especially troublesome because of their resistance to treatment with conventional antibiotics.
An airborne virus that is transferable between patients is tuberculosis (TB). Although it was previously thought that TB was functionally eradicated, it has made a resurgence in recent years. Other current pathogens of concern include the H1N1 virus, influenza viruses, and other airborne communicable disease vectors such as Vancomycin-resistant bacteria. As such, placing a curtain or other barrier to surround an infected patient serves as an infection barrier, that keeps such airborne pathogens contained within the area enclosed by the curtain.
One difficulty with the management of patients within a hospital setting, and especially in an emergency room setting, is that the number of resident patients is likely to fluctuate significantly. At certain times, an oversupply of available emergency rooms may exist. At other times, an emergency room can become highly crowded and devoid of available beds. In many emergency rooms, peak population events occur where the number of patients seeking treatment and being treated in the emergency room will exceed the number of patient treatment rooms, and “ward-like” beds.
During such times, patients needing treatment are often placed on gurneys in an ER hallway, or in an open treatment area that contains no type of privacy guard. Patients are often in hallways and held in something of a waiting pattern until a room opens up.
Because of the number of people that may be contained within an emergency room at a particular time, and because of a patient's need for treatment, the medical team will often begin to perform a treatment on a patient while the patient is on the gurney in a hall or other open area.
Another issue of concern to a patient is confined to a gurney in an open area is how to handle the patient's need to relieve him/herself. If the patient can not ambulate to a restroom, the patient may be forced to disrobe, and be placed upon a bed pan and relieve himself/herself in a semi-public area.
Currently, no satisfactory method or device exists for providing a privacy guard for such patients. Often, the situation is handled by moving a patient from an open area into a room, so that the person can go to the bathroom or be treated while in the room. Concurrently, the person in the room is moved outside into the hallway while the person in the room undergoes the treatment or procedure. Such swapping of patients in and out of rooms is time consuming, results in procedures being delayed, and has the potential to result in clinical mistakes.
Another way of handling privacy issues is for a nurse or doctor to stand close to the patient while holding up a bed sheet to serve as a privacy guard while the patient is either relieving himself or having a treatment performed. This technique is highly labor intensive, and provides an imperfect and possibly unsuitable privacy guard for the patient.
Therefore, one object of the present invention is to provide a privacy guard that can be coupled to a gurney to provide a modicum of privacy for a patient who is placed on a gurney or hospital bed in an open area, where no permanent privacy guard (e.g. curtains on tracks, or room walls) exist currently.
In addition to the emergency room situations described above, another area where privacy screens are helpful (but do not currently exist) is in transportation situations. The need for a privacy guard during transportation situations springs as much from infection control concerns as from privacy concerns.
Patients are often transferred between various areas in a healthcare facility. For example, in-patients who are residing in rooms and in hospital beds will often be transported from one room to another room in the hospital, or to a different department of the hospital, such as the radiology department.
During transportation of the patient, a patient's privacy can usually be guarded or preserved reasonably well by placing a blanket or a sheet over the patient's body. However, placing a sheet or blanket over the patient will not guard against the spread of infectious agents. For example, a patient who is in a room may need to be transported through the hospital's common areas to the CAT scan machine room. If the particular patient has been diagnosed as having a MRSA infection or a TB infection, one would wish to guard against the infection being spread to other areas and surfaces in the hospital, and other patients.
In order to prevent spreading the infection, it would be helpful to have a privacy guard, such as a screen, around the patient. Through a privacy screen, any sneezes, wheezes or airborne launched microbes could be prevented from escaping the barrier provided by the hospital screen.
Another area where gurneys are used to transport patients are ambulances. During any given day, a particular ambulance may be used to transport several different patients. Often, there is no time to sterilize the ambulance between runs. Since many bacteria and viruses can live outside the body for hours, long-lasting viruses and bacterias deposited in an ambulance can become resident in the ambulance, thus potentially infecting the ambulance crew along with subsequent patients within the ambulance.
In order to prevent the transfer of such infections, it would be helpful to have a privacy screen within the ambulance, to serve as a barrier for preventing the transfer of the infections from the patient to permanent surfaces in the ambulance, such as the walls, cabinets, and the like. Additionally, patient treatment often begins in the ambulance. During the course of this treatment, a patient may be partially or fully disrobed in order to perform whatever procedures are necessary. As such, it would be helpful to have a privacy guard to protect the privacy of the patient (and control infection) as the patient is moved from the ambulance and through the emergency room to the area within the emergency room where the patient is ultimately deposited or placed.
In addition to the trip between the ambulance and the emergency room, it would also be helpful to provide a privacy guard for the patient during the trip from the facility room to the ambulance. For example, nursing home patients being taken to a hospital are often loaded onto a gurney in their nursing home room, and then are wheeled through the nursing home and through an outside door of the nursing home to the ambulance parked outside. By placing a privacy screen on the ambulance gurney for the patient's trip through the nursing home, one can protect not only the privacy of the patient, but also help to protect visitors and others in the nursing home from possible patient-borne infections.
The reverse also applies. There are many circumstances where it is desirable to protect the patient from the infections of non-patients. By placing a privacy screen around the patient, one can reduce the likelihood that such airborne pathogens will infect the gurney-resident patient.
Currently, portable screens are used as privacy barriers in emergency rooms. These screens are not very well loved or used, because they are cumbersome, not readily available, do not provide great privacy features, do not inhibit infectious disease and are often in a state of disrepair. Examples of such screens can be found at www.iroomdividers.com, and include the Versaware plastic opaque room divider, the FP6 room divider, the VP6 portable room divider and others.
Such portable screens typically comprise a metal of frame on which a curtain is supported. A plurality of legs hold the metal frame off the ground, and support the frame. These frames are generally not easily transportable, and usually are not designed to be transported with the gurney. As such, although one can use the privacy screen around a bed while the bed is in a fixed position, the screen cannot be moved with the bed as it is transported in the hospital. As such, these screens do not provide a satisfactory solution of the problems discussed above.
It is therefore one object of the present invention to provide a privacy screen that is well adapted for use on hospital beds and gurneys.